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Five Years With The Modern AMD Catalyst Linux Driver

Phoronix: Five Years With The Modern AMD Catalyst Linux Driver

Today marks five years since the revolutionary AMD Catalyst Linux graphics driver was announced to the world by Phoronix. While the driver still had a lot of work ahead, it was September 2007 that brought the brand new Catalyst Linux driver that shared more code with the Catalyst Windows driver and ushered in a new era for AMD with providing same-day Linux driver support, performance improvements, and new functionality to match the Windows driver...

Having just done an upgrade from a Radeon HD3870 to a Nvidia GTX660Ti, I must say that AMD drivers are fairly good.

I think AMD are better at Linux integration as in RandR and start up modes where my Nvidia driver starts Kubuntu with the screen orientation wrong for my dual monitor setup. I also have been getting flash video overlay problems which I didn't get on AMD/ATI.

Nvidia seems to be better for Wine games, as I now don't get missing textures in Everquest, that I was experiencing before and is a known problem with AMD/ATI.

I wouldn't have a problem getting another ATI if this Nvidia card I have now, dies. I worry as Nvidia cards are known to have burn out problems with past releases.

The Catalyst Linux driver still faces its share of criticism these days, but the changes introduced in September 2007 set the stage for a much better driver compared to going back further.

I just tested 12.8 again on my Notebook with a HD 6550M. It still doesn't wake up from suspend. Screen remains black, the fans are running fast, indicating 100% cpu usage and no response from any keys including sysrq. I didn't even bother to read the log file this time and just reinstalled the open source driver.
Why is it that amd can't wake up their own hardware properly?

Having just done an upgrade from a Radeon HD3870 to a Nvidia GTX660Ti, I must say that AMD drivers are fairly good.

I think AMD are better at Linux integration as in RandR and start up modes where my Nvidia driver starts Kubuntu with the screen orientation wrong for my dual monitor setup. I also have been getting flash video overlay problems which I didn't get on AMD/ATI.

Nvidia seems to be better for Wine games, as I now don't get missing textures in Everquest, that I was experiencing before and is a known problem with AMD/ATI.

I wouldn't have a problem getting another ATI if this Nvidia card I have now, dies. I worry as Nvidia cards are known to have burn out problems with past releases.

Use Options "Primary" "True" in your xorg on the screen you wish to be, erm the primary :P

I have to do this myself with the oss radeon drivers, else the hdmi takes over from the vga port (it must think Digital > Analogue)

I just tested 12.8 again on my Notebook with a HD 6550M. It still doesn't wake up from suspend. Screen remains black, the fans are running fast, indicating 100% cpu usage and no response from any keys including sysrq. I didn't even bother to read the log file this time and just reinstalled the open source driver.
Why is it that amd can't wake up their own hardware properly?

I experience the reverse of your situation.

fglrx always suspends and resumes my notebook properly upon lid close / open. But the OSS driver instantly causes a hard lockup upon lid open, with the only open being a power cycle to reboot the machine.